Cheaper in the Back Bay?

Rent hike forces pioneering eatery from Tremont Street to unlikely new locale

Prat Thakkar, Globe Correspondent, Sunday, January 06, 2002

On Tremont Street, where Geoffrey's Cafe and Bar once served Sunday brunch until 3 p.m., an empty storefront sits behind a padlocked door. Geoffrey's - unable to afford a large rent hike - moved to the Back Bay.

It was a symbolic move: one of the first of the gentrifiers in the neighborhood found itself priced out.

"My bank told me I was crazy to open a restaurant (on Tremont Street) in 1992," Geoffrey's owner Michael Aplin said. "And now look at it. We got kicked out of our space. The South End got too fancy for us."

Consider this: once there was The Empty Vase, a plain, simple neighborhood flower store on Dartmouth St.

Now there's Orrice, a modern, elegant flower store complete with a flower-patterned ceiling, Greek columns and beveled mirrors.

Ask residents and store-owners about newcomers to the South End and you'll be besieged with names - Flour Bakery, Starbucks, Market, Code 10, Formaggio, Laboratory, Posh. The list is long. The pace fast. The rents high. The casualties like The Empty Vase are missed for a bit, but soon forgotten.

Once considered an alternative to the Back Bay, the South End is swiftly becoming the place to be, as older businesses leave their now high-priced quarters to make way for a new wave of high-end restaurants and eclectic boutique-like stores.

"The South End has become a destination," said David Goldman, a neighborhood activist and developer. "There's more foot traffic and so [the area] can support more restaurants and industries."

Some call it a second wave of gentrification, akin to the first wave more than a decade ago. But many in the neighborhood distance themselves from that evaluation. They attribute the increase in new businesses to the natural cycle of things; no one seems surprised by the energy or the pace in the area.

"It's really nothing new," said Nick Russo, president of Gibson/domain domain, a realty company with offices on Tremont Street. "It's like going to the zoo and seeing a tiger. These neighborhoods changed a long time ago."

Though not really that long ago. In the late '80s and early '90s the South End began changing dramatically, Tremont Street was transformed from an avenue populated by boarded-up storefronts and fake I.D. stores to a boulevard of exclusive eateries owned and run by elite chefs.

Last summer, when Geoffrey's lease came up for renewal, Aplin was left with sticker shock: his $4,300 monthly rent (he signed the 9.5-year lease in 1992) was now up to $10,000, and there were six others bidding for the space, he said. Unable to afford the hike and still keep the restaurant affordable, he moved to a larger space in the Back Bay, at the corner of Dartmouth Street and Commonwealth Avenue.

"Per square foot, the rent [here] is comparable to what I was paying in the South End," he said.

Emily Ou, director of retail services for the real estate firm Cushman and Wakefield in Boston, says retail rents are generally still quite a bit higher in the Back Bay, averaging $55 to $175 per square foot there compared to $40 to $60 in the South End and $30 to $65 on Beacon Hill.

But with liquor licenses capped in the Back Bay, she said, a new restaurant can get one much more easily in the South End.

Though at first glance this new wave of businesses and the accompanying rent hikes might seem like nothing more than another version of the first round in the late '80s, with still bigger fish eating once-big fish, neighborhood watchers suggest it's not just the rents that have changed.

"Restaurants are like clothes, whatever's fashionable works," said Ken Tutunjian, senior vice president for Coldwell Banker in the South End.

And in the South End, what's fashionable has changed.

"The South End used to be a young, hip and very gay neighborhood," said Aplin. "Now it's all dot-commers. There are a lot of young couples moving in with two cars, making several hundred thousand dollars a year. It's no longer the funky, beatnik neighborhood."

"I never thought I'd be catching baby carriages," said Russo, speaking of the newcomers.

"I thought the gay population would move out of the South End a long time ago," he added. "But that hasn't happened. They're just getting older and richer."

Coupled with a demographic change is the limited amount of storefront space in small, old buildings, and city zoning regulations that make it hard to get commercial permits along residential streets like Dartmouth.

"The filet of the South End is Tremont to Dartmouth," said Tutunjian.

"Gentrification part two in the South End is moving up the avenue, up Washington Street," said Tutunjian. "The people who can't afford where they are now are moving up the street."

"Many, many people are spending $800,000 to $1 million to buy units on Washington Street," said Russo. "No one thought [the street] would move as fast as it did."

Goldman agrees. "Washington Street was a place that people were afraid of 10 years ago," said Goldman. "Now, they're fighting over condominiums."

Joanne Chang, owner of Flour Bakery, whose luscious desserts have become the talk of the neighborhood, looked at Washington Street two years ago and nearly turned it down.

"When I first looked at it, I was not at all excited about it," she said. "It was a dreary October day, there was mud everywhere, and dead trees, and I thought 'no way.' "

She went back a few days later, along with someone who knew the neighborhood well, took a look at all the construction going on in the area, and decided to take a chance.

"We were close enough to the heart of the South End, but also on this end there was nothing," she said.

Now, one year and three months after she opened, Chang is glad she gave Washington a try: "There's this vitality, people are excited to be here, a lot of new people have moved here."

And it's only the beginning, predicts Russo: "You haven't seen change. When people say I'm going to the South End - five years from now, they will mean Washington St. and Harrison Avenue."

This story ran on page 1 of the Boston Globe's City Weekly section on Sunday, January 06, 2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.